Mr. Mom

by William Jackson on 2013-01-02

As a working man, it is usually difficult for me to truly appreciate the work my wife does at home. The only insight I am privileged to receive in this area comes when Rebecca is sick. For the last two days I have been mostly running the show at home.

Rebecca rang in the new year by lying in bed with a fever for most of yesterday and today. Today was supposed to be my first day back at work after the holiday break, but that got postponed due to Rebeccaʼs illness.

To make things interesting, my 12-month-old daughter Molly has an incessantly runny nose. Whatever illness is inflicting itself upon her, it is making her sleepy a little more than usual and cranky when she is awake.

She also takes offense to having her nose wiped. I have an aversion to snot, especially when it comes in volumes that Molly seems capable of producing. So we butt heads over that throughout the day. My one consolation is that she does sit still (and seems to enjoy) when I rub lotion on her chapped face.

The weather has been relatively miserable: cold, wet but not rainy, overcast, depressing — much like what I remember from my winters spent in England. That makes it hard to conjure up anything resembling a desire to leave the house.

I must be a weak one, because on only my second day of being in charge I longed for a chance to get out of the house. I managed to contain my excitement when I learned that we had some books that needed to be returned to the library. My daughters were well-behaved even though Emily (3) chose some two-star books to take home. I think for her checking out books from the library is like rolling dice — she randomly pulls a few books from the shelves, and we hope they turn out decently interesting. She had bad luck today.

Emily was excited to hold on to the dime I brought so I could pay a late fee. She proudly presented it to the librarian when we checked out, and nowIʼm square with the library.

I felt like we had not enjoyed being out of the house long enough, so we made a stop at the grocery store and I let Emily choose something from the donut shelves. She picked out a pan dulce only because it had pink frosting. It was big but she finished the whole thing by the time we got home.

One thing I really enjoy about being in charge is cooking dinner. Last night I made fettuccine Alfredo. Rebecca liked it, but the real barometer by which I measure the success of my cooking is how much Emily eats. Happily, she cleaned her plate last night and had even more for lunch today.

Tonight I made baked potato soup. This was great because the recipe called for an entire package of bacon.

Rebecca seems to be on the mend, so I imagine I will be back at work tomorrow with my nose to the grindstone.